Call Of Duty League Stage 1/Week 3/Day 1 takeaways — “Texas Optics”

What a start to the weekend! Ranked Play and the last matches before Major I. It doesn’t get better than this, but of course today just had to bring a bit of controversy along with it. We’ll get into that at the end of everything, so take a look at how the earlier matches turned out before Twitter timelines went crazy.

Los Angeles Thieves vs Paris Legion

• If you’re gonna win, Kenny has to go off, and my word he did. Another plus twenty stat line along with some round changing plays in Control. As much as Octane is heralded as the big name guy on the squad, it’s still Kenny’s team.
• Envoy however took a step back. He was 65/81 for a .80 KD and -16 kills. Not only that, he had the lowest damage in the game, with 8189. That means he wasn’t influencing anything out there, and that’s not what you want to see from your MVP caliber SMG.
• Keep playing Gavutu. The boys set the Hardpoint record with a 250-57 beatdown. What’s really intriguing is that there wasn’t necessarily a huge differential in kills, so it was all on LAT locking everything down and dictating the map control with timely kills.

• Paris… There’s not a lot to say here. Sadly there usually isn’t. You finished the first stage of qualifiers 0-5, and the only time you ever got close to a win was going up 2-1 on Faze, who don’t look anything like the uncomfortable squad we saw in their first game.
• Once again, at least they looked competitive mostly? They had a shot at the Control, and the S&D looked nice from them. But that’s not a lot to hang your hat on. It’s not time to regroup, it’s time to reboot.
• Besides his ace in an S&D round, John looked absolutely terrible. He finished 61/84 for a .73 and -23 kills. That included a really nasty 6/20 on the opening Gavutu. John can look like the best player on the map at times, but it doesn’t happen enough to change the momentum of pro Call Of Duty matches.

Atlanta Faze vs Minnesota Rokkr

• Yeesh, we all said once Simp caught form this team would look unbeatable again right? Well don’t look away, he was on fire in this one, with a 58/44 kill count and a 1.32 KD. It wasn’t just that he was outslaying Rokkr, he was making the plays we know Simp makes, and he looked like he’s found his ferocity again.
• Not to be outdone, Cellium was nuts again, with a 2.0 KD in S&D and another obscene 1.64 Control. Faze must internally be competing for MVP, because Cellium seems to be wanting a bit of extra respect.
• The last thing to do is close out the reeling New York Subliners on Sunday. If I’m Faze, pick some maps you need to work on, because this one, while never safe, is one you should still win.

• For Minnesota this was not at all what you wanted to see. They really should have taken the Search, it was in their grasp. But Faze swooped in and took it on the back of Simp’s 14-4 and two dropped final rounds. You can’t dwell on what should have been, but that one map could be the difference between the winners and losers bracket.
• It always felt like every time Minnesota would gain ground in the respawns, Faze would deny them and stamp out that fire. It was closer than the final score looked, but moral victories don’t translate into W’s.
• The two former Faze players, Priestahh and majormaniak were the ones to have the toughest games. Combined they had -34 kills, and unfortunately Attach and Standy couldn’t make up for them. Standy certainly did his darndest, and the multikills he was getting have to still be frustrating Atlanta even after the match.

Toronto Ultra vs Optic Texas

• Man, the Ultra really came out flat today huh? Besides CleanX’s insane ten spree on Bocage, all of Toronto’s role players were largely invisible. They also all finished negative, and that’s a recipe for a loss.
• There really isn’t anything nice to say about this one. Toronto just got outplayed by a team that is their opposite when it comes to teamwork. This is a “check yourself, figure out what went wrong, and correct course” moment.
• Maybe you could blame Cammy’s COVID? He was the worst of the bunch, but it’s not like he was having any dominant games beforehand. He’s got to get back into game shape for Toronto to shake this off.

• Optic on the other hand looked better than we’ve ever seen them. Is this really the same team? Even in that Paris 3-0 they had their moments where they kind of tripped over their own feet. They looked decisive and played as a unit. If they want to grab a Major win, especially this one at home, this is how they need to play.
• The best news for them is this was the best case scenario for grabbing a winner’s bracket slot. We all thought a 3-2 loss to Toronto would be the most they could expect, but adding 3 map wins without a single loss versus what is a top 3 team is a big W.
• The only thing that’s going to overshadow a great win is Shotzzy at least supposedly unknowingly breaking GAs and using the F8 Stabilizer. One can’t say it’s the sole reason Optic won, I mean, they looked great and Toronto straight up sucked, but one could at least look at the 13 point differential of score on the Bocage Hardpoint and see Shotzzy’s 39/28 and think that may have drifted Toronto’s way without it.

Stay tuned to Gaming Trend for our takeaways as the season continues, and we’ll do our best to bring you content here and on our YouTube channel! You can follow the league both live and after hours on the official Call Of Duty League YouTube channel right here. If you want to jump into the game, check out CallOfDuty.com, and if you want to know more about it first, check out our review right here.

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